Takaki216

Advanced Ethnic Studies at Pritzker College Prep

Roger Shimomura’s Shimomura Crossing the Delaware: a boat carries figures in Japanese clothing across stylized waves beneath an American flag.
Roger Shimomura · Shimomura Crossing the Delaware

01 · Read & Take Notes

Read the chapter. Take notes on the aim and the three key course ideas.

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02 · Draft Your Aim Response

After reading, use your notes and evidence to build your response to the aim.

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03 · Study Words

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04 · Study Writing

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05 · Practice on Blooket

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06 · How to Ace the ACT Reading

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The Big Questions

01

Who invented race in America and what did it buy them?

No single person invented race at one moment. Colonists, landowners, lawmakers, and others built rules about who belonged, who could own land, and whose work could be taken. These rules formed a hierarchy: some groups received more power and rights than others. Claims about religion, civilization, and human worth offered a justification for those unequal arrangements. Race is socially constructed: people create racial categories and give them consequences. Following who gained land, labor, and wealth helps us see what these categories “bought” for the people who enforced them.

Related aims

These aims emphasize how unequal power and racial boundaries were built. Some also show resistance; each aim appears under the question it most directly helps us investigate.

  1. What is race?

    Defining race lets us investigate who created racial categories and why those categories mattered.

    Week 0

  2. How do myths work and what is mine?

    Studying useful stories helps us recognize how a story about a group can serve someone’s interests; our own myths also show how stories guide action.

    Week 3

  3. How did England's conquest of Ireland become a political, economic, and racial blueprint for colonizing North America?

    The comparison traces how English rulers reused methods of conquest and racial ranking to gain land and labor.

    Week 4

  4. How did the Virginia and New England colonies transform from missions to "civilize" Indians into campaigns to "root out" and exterminate them?

    The shift from promises of civilization to destruction shows how settlers’ interests reshaped their treatment of Native people.

    Week 5

  5. How does Takaki use Shakespeare's Caliban and Prospero as a metaphor for colonialism?

    The literary comparison asks how representations of a colonizer and a colonized person can make unequal power appear natural.

    Week 6

  6. 4 Question Method

    The four questions separate events, causes, motives, and judgments so we can investigate who gained from colonial power.

    Week 7

  7. How did the English use the idea of the “savage” to take other people’s land, first in Ireland and then in America?

    The label “savage” gave conquest a justification and helped colonizers claim other people’s land.

    Week 7

  8. How did economic and ideological forces contribute to the origins of the Virginia and New England colonies?

    Linking economic goals with religious and racial claims explains both what colonists wanted and how they defended taking it.

    Week 8

  9. How did geography impact American history 1607-1836?

    Geography helps explain which land, routes, and resources were valuable, and why controlling them became a source of power.

    Week 14

  10. Who invented race in America and what did it buy them?

    This is the first big question itself: combine the chapter cases to explain how racial categories served material and political interests.

    Week 15 · Week 16

  11. How were indentured servants similar to and different from slaves, and how did that status change over time in colonial Virginia?

    Changing labor rules show racial status being built through law, rather than simply existing unchanged from the beginning.

    Week 9

  12. How did economic self-interest shape the alliance choices of elites, small farmers, and slaves during Bacon's Rebellion?

    Shifting alliances reveal how material interests could unite workers or encourage elites to divide them by race.

    Week 10

  13. What were the causes (factors) and effects (consequences) of Bacon's Rebellion?

    Tracing the rebellion’s causes and consequences helps explain how powerful colonists responded to unrest by strengthening unequal labor arrangements.

    Week 11

  14. How does John Gast depict the relationship between economics and ideology in his 1872 painting American Progress?

    Reading the painting links an image of progress to expansion, resource control, and the displacement of Native people.

    Week 12

  15. What were Andrew Jackson's motivations for ratifying the Indian Removal Act?

    Jackson’s choices connect federal power and racial claims to the land settlers wanted.

    Week 13

  16. What role did slavery play in the American economy and who, specifically, did it benefit?

    Following the gains from slavery identifies who benefited from racialized labor and who bore its costs.

    Week 17

  17. In what sense was slavery ideologically enforced?

    Examining beliefs used to enforce slavery shows how an unequal system was defended as right or natural.

    Week 18

  18. Why did America keep demanding people’s labor while rejecting the people themselves?

    The contradiction between wanting people’s labor and denying their belonging exposes how racial boundaries could protect economic advantages.

    Chapter 5 study guide · Chapter 6 study guide · Chapter 7 study guide · Chapter 8 study guide · Chapter 9 study guide · Chapter 10 study guide · Chapter 11 study guide · Week 28

  19. How were Irish immigrants both punished and privileged by the U.S. racial hierarchy, and what role did economics play in shaping Irish identity?

    Irish experiences show that racial status could bring both exclusion and relative advantage, with economic competition shaping those boundaries.

    Week 19

  20. How were slavery, China, and Manifest Destiny major factors governing America's decision to go to war against Mexico?

    The war connects expansion to markets, slavery, and a belief that conquest was the nation’s destiny.

    Week 20

  21. Why were Chinese workers essential to building America’s economy but then legally banned from becoming American?

    Chinese workers’ exclusion reveals how a society could benefit from a group’s work while legally denying that group belonging.

    Week 22

  22. From the 1860s to the 1930s, how did the United States use ideology and policy to dispossess Native Americans of their land while claiming to “civilize” them?

    Allotment and other policies show government turning claims of civilization into mechanisms for taking Native land.

    Week 24 · Week 25

  23. How did housing segregation, factory hiring, and divide-and-control unionism work together to rebuild racial hierarchy in Chicago, 1910–1919?

    The Chicago case traces how institutions rebuilt racial boundaries in a new place and used them to shape housing, work, and power.

    Week 32

  24. What can we learn from America's decision to intern Japanese Americans in WW2?

    Wartime incarceration shows government using ancestry to decide whose rights could be suspended, revealing how racial belonging was enforced.

    Week 33

02

How did the people America excluded compel America to change?

People denied rights and opportunities did more than wait to be included. They moved, built communities, organized unions, challenged rules, and demanded that the country live up to its promises. Collective action helped people combine their strength, while solidarity helped them keep working together despite risks. Ideas are weapons: a shared demand for equality can help people organize against unfair treatment. Change came through pressure, choices, and struggle; it was uneven and could be resisted or reversed. We study both the gains people won and the barriers that remained.

Related aims

These aims emphasize how people respond to exclusion, build power, or make an argument for change. Related evidence can also help answer the first big question.

  1. What and how are we going to learn?

    Reading, discussion, and writing help us recover excluded people’s experiences and explain how they changed the country.

    Week 1

  2. How do we write a good paragraph?

    A clear paragraph connects a claim to evidence, the same skill we need to explain how people challenged exclusion.

    Week 2

  3. How did push and pull factors shape the migration stories of Irish, Mexican, and Chinese immigrants?

    Migration was one way people responded to hardship and pursued new possibilities; comparing migrations shows both their choices and the barriers they met.

    Week 23

  4. How did the United States use war, law, and economic power to transform Mexicans from landowners into laborers—and how did Mexicans resist?

    This question includes the making of inequality, but it also asks how Mexicans resisted losing land and power—the starting point for studying challenges to exclusion.

    Week 20 · Week 21

  5. How did Japanese Americans use collective organizing to build power, and how did their strategies mirror those of Mexican Americans?

    Collective organizing shows how excluded workers pooled their strength and changed what employers had to confront.

    Week 26

  6. How did Russian Jewish immigrants use collective organizing to build power in America, and how did their experience mirror that of Japanese Americans?

    Comparing Jewish and Japanese workers makes organizing strategies—and the sources of their power—visible across groups.

    Week 27

  7. How were the push and pull factors driving the Great Migration similar and different to the migrations of other groups in American history?

    The Great Migration shows people acting on opportunities and escaping constraints, even when new destinations imposed new barriers.

    Week 31

  8. How did the people America excluded compel America to change?

    This is the second big question itself: bring together migration, organizing, resistance, and reform while explaining what changed and what remained unequal.

    Week 37

  9. How did economic forces change opportunities for non-white people in America during WW2?

    Wartime labor needs opened opportunities. This case helps us distinguish an opening created by circumstances from changes people had to demand and defend.

    Week 34

  10. In what sense was WW2 a cause of the Civil Rights Movement?

    The connection between war and civil rights traces how new expectations, experiences, and contradictions strengthened demands for change.

    Week 35

  11. Why did Dr. King call "racial injustice" and "economic injustice" inseparable twins?

    King’s argument connects legal rights to jobs and material security, asking how far change must go to make equality meaningful.

    Week 36

These two questions summarize the course. Each Aim summarizes one week of the course. These two Big Questions are our Super Aims: when you can answer them with a strong claim, evidence, and reasoning, you will have mastered the course.

Reviewing artwork, maps, timelines, and the other Resources helps you build the evidence and context you need to answer the Big Questions.